John Lothrop Motley, A Memoir — Complete eBook

And yet in the midst of all these marks of haste and
negligence, here and there the philosophical student
of history betrays himself, the ideal of noble achievement
glows in an eloquent paragraph, or is embodied in a
loving portrait like that of the professor and historian
Harlem. The novel, taken in connection with the
subsequent developments of the writer’s mind,
is a study of singular interest. It is a chaos
before the creative epoch; the light has not been
divided from the darkness; the firmament has not yet
divided the waters from the waters. The forces
at work in a human intelligence to bring harmony out
of its discordant movements are as mysterious, as
miraculous, we might truly say, as those which give
shape and order to the confused materials out of which
habitable worlds are evolved. It is too late now
to be sensitive over this unsuccessful attempt as
a story and unconscious success as a self-portraiture.
The first sketches of Paul Veronese, the first patterns
of the Gobelin tapestry, are not to be criticised for
the sake of pointing out their inevitable and too
manifest imperfections. They are to be carefully
studied as the earliest efforts of the hand which painted
the Marriage at Cana, of the art which taught the rude
fabrics made to be trodden under foot to rival the
glowing canvas of the great painters. None of
Motley’s subsequent writings give such an insight
into his character and mental history. It took
many years to train the as yet undisciplined powers
into orderly obedience, and to bring the unarranged
materials into the organic connection which was needed
in the construction of a work that should endure.
There was a long interval between his early manhood
and the middle term of life, during which the slow
process of evolution was going on. There are plants
which open their flowers with the first rays of the
sun; there are others that wait until evening to spread
their petals. It was already the high noon of
life with him before his genius had truly shown itself;
if he had not lived beyond this period, he would have
left nothing to give him a lasting name.

V.

In the autumn of 1841, Mr. Motley received the appointment
of Secretary of Legation to the Russian Mission, Mr.
Todd being then the Minister. Arriving at St.
Petersburg just at the beginning of winter, he found
the climate acting very unfavorably upon his spirits
if not upon his health, and was unwilling that his
wife and his two young children should be exposed
to its rigors. The expense of living, also, was
out of proportion to his income, and his letters show